The wheat grass with air vents in the tops of the plastic covering fared well - however, the amount of moisture that accumulated in the covering did not allow the grass to grow as well as the uncovered pot.

The wheat grass at 2 weeks - in the uncovered pot did the best. Its blade height is shown below.

At the two week mark, all the wheat grass was harvested and fed to the cattle, goats and horses. The trays, with the existing root systems were re-seeded and fed with a liquid blend of jennifer's Landscape Vitamins to duplicate the initial results. The trays had the covers replaced with the anticipation that no additional water would be added to the trays during the next test period.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Naked Cow Dairy is situated on the Waianae coast on the western part of O'ahu, Hawai'i. The area receives very little rainfall, approximately 12" per calendar year.

The dairy owners currently purchase feed from the mainland United States and ship it to O'ahu. This is not a very cost effective way to maintain a dairy farm.

When I heard about the farm's situation, I decided to assist the dairy, pro-bono to prove the Jennifer's Landscape Vitamins system could grow grass and feed for the cattle without much supplemental water.

After a month of visiting the site and starting to make a thermophilic in-situ compost pile out of local waste stream materials, it was time to start a small series of test plots to prove the massive expense of irrigating the land could be relatively optional.

My premise was to simply illustrate how to grow grass and feed quickly, using on-site materials in a test and then apply the test plot on a larger scale while reproducing the same type of results.

The first part of the test:

I visited a friend and local farmer to acquire two covered test flats and some wheat grass seed.

Using materials found at the Naked Cow Dairy, (soil, wood chips and green compost) I made a 3" layer inside each of the two test flats.

I also had a baseline 5 gallon pot with a suffering basil planted in finished compost that I had created on the North Shore which I planted about 6 seeds in to gauge the test flats' growth.